My IUFD with Emily – The Less Palatable Details

WARNING: This post contains details of my experience with intrauterine fetal death (IUFD) which may not be suitable for those who have weaker constitution. Please do not read if thinking about the physical effects of death on the body would be disturbing to you.

Over the past sixteen and a half months since Emily died in my womb, I have often thought about (but never shared) the less pleasant physical details of what happened inside and outside of me in the four weeks from the days leading up to the news that her heart was not beating to the day she was buried. Today I would like to share them, for my own healing and to encourage others to share similar elements of their experiences, if they too have been reticent in doing so.

Around August 18, 2019, eight days before the prenatal checkup appointment that revealed Emily’s heart was no longer beating, I felt her moving a lot. It seemed like she was doing flips, rolls and somersaults nonstop, which I had never experienced with my firstborn child. Truthfully, it bothered me at the time, because it happened at night and she was moving so much it took longer than usual to fall asleep. Within two or three days after that, though, I started to notice she wasn’t moving as much as she normally did. By August 22, I was concerned, so I sat at my work desk for a moment to wait for her to move, then when I felt a little kick I resumed my work, assured that she was still okay and God was keeping her alive despite her physical defects. However, I think that was the day she died, as that was possibly the last movement I felt from her.

That weekend was characterized by a good deal of celebration of Emily’s coming birth, because as a coworker had recently remarked to me, at 6 months pregnant it was now obvious that a little life was growing in me. A Friday lunch with some of my work people brought congratulations about having a second child, a little girl with whom my son could grow up. Saturday I worked on a layout for the glow-in-the-dark moon and stars plastic pieces I bought for the nursery. Then Sunday my husband and I went to the local zoo with some friends who presented a gift of baby girl clothes for Emily, which was a very nice surprise.

I know now that during those celebratory moments, when I was already somewhat subconsciously aware that she was possibly not faring well, indeed she was no longer with us. She had passed from this broken world into the presence of Jesus. I still haven’t decided whether to save those baby clothes for the living little girl I hope we will have, keep them in a box dedicated to her, or give them away to someone who has an immediate need for them.

I believe those unusual, whole-body movements I felt the week before my appointment were Emily having one or more seizures. From the limited research I have done about seizures and the knowledge we had about Emily’s complex heart defect, it makes sense. I read that seizures are commonly caused by lack of oxygen, which was definitely the case for Emily. Her condition of critical pulmonary stenosis meant there was no blood flow to her lungs and the dysplastic right atrioventricular valve caused reverse flow of her blood. This resulted in her heart working extra hard to distribute oxygen through her body, but ultimately it was insufficient, hence what I believe to be seizures, at approximately 25 weeks gestation.

After we learned her heart was no longer beating at the appointment on Monday, August 26, 2019, we took more time than most to move forward with induction of labor. As a result of this, about a week later, I began to feel and hear bubbling inside my uterus. This alerted me all the more to the reality that my daughter was not only dead, but her body was now rapidly decomposing and I was carrying that with me everywhere I went. I noticed I was losing weight because she was no longer growing and her body was releasing fluids, causing the gas buildup I felt more frequently every day.

Finally, after a second ultrasound to confirm no heart activity, my husband and I decided it was time to induce labor. The evening of Friday, September 6, I was given a cervical softening medication at the hospital, scheduled to return on Sunday, September 8 at 3:00 PM to continue the induction process. However, by 3:00 AM on Sunday, I was in active labor and honestly thought for a moment that I would be delivering my daughter at home. When I set a blanket down and pushed, my membrane ruptured, which happily relieved a lot of the pressure I had felt from all the gas accumulation. It also made it possible to finish getting ready to go to the hospital relatively comfortably.

The amniotic fluid was a dark red color. I learned from prior reading that the fluid is normally clear or yellow, but can be dark in the case of an intrauterine fetal demise (IUFD), so this was not a surprise. When the hospital attendant who brought us in asked how long the fluid had been that color (whether or not it had been that way the whole time), I knew she knew what had happened, though she was careful not to say anything.

It was probably only 15-20 minutes after we were settled in the triage area when Emily was born. The hospital staff wasn’t even present, because no one expected her to come so fast. My husband helped pull her out and placed her on my belly, where I held her while he called my mom (who was at the hospital already) to let her know her granddaughter had arrived. She had told us beforehand that at a minimum she wanted to hold the baby, so she made her way to the room shortly thereafter. The time of birth written on the memory certificate we were given read 4:33 AM, as reported by the staff, but it was really about 4:30 — the staff just didn’t see it to declare it until a few minutes later.

As expected, Emily’s body was not in very good condition, but I really appreciate one of the nurses telling us she was beautiful. She was very red and her skin was peeling and rubbing off, causing her blood to seep out also, not in large amounts, but enough to stain the blanket and hat in which she was clothed, to the point of needing a new hat to cover the first hat for the pictures they took of her. My mom had asked me to get a lock of hair as a keepsake, but with the skin loss there was no hair to keep. Her mouth was open also, which may be unattractive to some, but it made me think about how she was probably already singing praises to God, in concert with the angels.

After we took turns holding her, we placed her body on an iced bassinet which was prepared by the hospital staff, to delay further decay until it was time for us to leave her with them. It strikes me that the iced nature of the bassinet is in direct contrast to the heatable one in which she would have been placed if she had been born alive. We took pictures as proof of her existence, to capture as much as we could of what she looked like then and to imagine her lively appearance now in Heaven. The hospital staff also gave us black and white pictures of her, including precious close-ups of her hands and feet.

Because of the significant decomposition by the time she was born, on the day of her service a week and a half later, we were advised by the mortuary attendant not to verify the identity of her body prior to the service. We opted to proceed with the viewing anyway, knowing it couldn’t be much worse than we had already seen and wanting to make sure it truly was our daughter’s body which was being buried. I was happy to see that she was dressed in the preemie unicorn-decorated outfit we purchased for her, and that it was indeed our Emily in the tiny, white casket.

Today I imagine tiny bones remain where her body was buried that day, and call me disturbed if you wish, but I happen to like skeletons, so I would love to see them and mentally picture the infant skin of my daughter that once encased them enveloped around them again. My respect for the surrounding graves trumps that desire, of course, and I have no real need of seeing the bones anyway, for I will see a much more glorious, treasured sight when God takes me home to Heaven too. In addition to our Lord Jesus, my sweet daughter herself will be ready for me to take her in my arms and kiss her head like I did so many times on the day of her birth… and this time, she will be fully alive.